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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

European Cups: Changes in coefficient calculation

Andreas Dimatos, the director of Greek sports daily newspaper Goal News, published a very interesting article concerning the changes in coefficient calculation that UEFA will implement from next season (2008-2009).

1) club coefficient ... from next season not added the 33% of the country coefficient, but it will be reduced to 20%. This will benefit medium strenth clubs (that don’t benefit from the low coefficient from their country, unlike clubs from e.g. Spain) and also the clubs that regularly (annualy) play in Europe and have their own points, in stead of being supported by their country coefficient.

2) the bonus of 3 pts for entering the group phase of the champions league, will be raised to 4 point (thus equalling 2 ‘paper’ wins) and the same bonus will be given to teams qualifying to the round of 16, in stead of just the 1 point that this yielded till this year.

3) the clubs will benefit from their points in the qualifying rounds, while till now these points (reduced to half their value) only went to the country coefficient. The basic rule is that the points they will get will be standard and independent from the match results. This way, for the first Q-round of UEFA cup they will obtain 0.25 pts, for the Q2 0.5 and for Q3 1.000 and for Q4 1.5 and for qualyfying for the group phase 2.0 pts. The same way, in the 1st qualif round of the CL the bonus will be 0.5 pts, Q2 1.0 pts. No points bonus is foreseen for Q3 (as the teams that will not qualify will continue in the last Q round of UEFA cup), also no added bonus for the play offs (as the teams that qualify will get 4 pts for the group phase of CL and those losing will get 2 pts for the UEFA group phase).

Mr. Dimatos has been kind enough to vouch for the validity of his UEFA source although understandably he couldn't tell me their identity. However, he did promise to keep me informed of new developments.

And then finally the most probable Team Ranking that will be used for seeding next season. I think that only the new 20% country contribution will be used retroactive, so only the Team Ranking 2009 will be changed. The Country Ranking 2009 will not change. I assume that the new bonuspoints and points for qualifying will not be used retroactive, and thus the rankings for 2009/10 will be the first to use the new calculation method.